Elhousine Elazzaoui Wins a Record Third Golden Trail World Series Title

Elhousine Elazzaoui started the Golden Trail World Series grand finale third in the standings, and he had to win the race to keep his title. He went to the front on the first big climb at Muju Trail in South Korea on Sunday, stayed there to the finish of the 28.65-kilometer (about 17.8-mile) course with 2,313 meters (about 7,590 feet) of climbing, and won in 2:49:14 to take the overall crown for a third straight year.

Norway’s Stian Angermund and Switzerland’s Rémi Bonnet each won the men’s title twice. Kilian Jornet won it in 2019, and Poland’s Bartłomiej Przedwojewski took the 2020 edition, a stage race in the Azores that replaced the series in the pandemic year. Sunday’s result, Elazzaoui’s fourth win of the season according to the series’ race report, makes the NNormal runner the first to win three titles since the series began in 2018.

Segment Points Shaped the Title Race

Elazzaoui ended the year on 1,130 points, Kipngeno on 1,128 and Philemon Kiriago, who started the day in the lead, on 1,075. The three came to Muju 46 points apart. The finale paid 300 points to the winner instead of the usual 200, and the course’s timed sections all carried points of their own.

Each race pays extra to the quickest runners over marked uphill, downhill and sprint stretches, and across the season those bonuses had worked against Elazzaoui: Kiriago banked 106 of them before Muju to his 58. Count race placings only, and the Moroccan would have arrived in South Korea as the leader. In Muju he picked up just two segment points, for fifth fastest on a 2.5-kilometer downhill that averages a 28 percent grade, which was also the size of his winning margin.

Elazzaoui Went Clear on the First Climb

Kiriago, who beat Kipngeno to win Sierre-Zinal in August, tried an early move on the opening ascent, but the group soon came back together. Elazzaoui broke it up on the high ridge linking Seolcheonbong and Hyangjeokbong, about 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) up and the top of the course, and was a minute clear by 6.5K. From there the gap only grew through the wet, technical descent that followed, and by the second time over Hyangjeokbong he was more than five minutes ahead.

Kiriago had lost four minutes by 9K and was down in 10th, and by the top of the second climb he was 15th and more than 12 minutes back. He finished 11th and slid to third overall.

Kipngeno had stopped briefly on the first climb, and at the foot of the final ascent, around 21K, Joey Hadorn, Alain Santamaría and Taylor Stack were still roughly two minutes up on him. Two kilometers later he had climbed into second, and he crossed the line only 43 seconds behind Elazzaoui. Timothy Kibett of Salomon took third, 90 seconds down on the winner, with Hadorn fourth.

Elazzaoui’s other wins this year came at Ledro Sky Trentino, the Salomon Pitz Alpine Glacier Trail and the Zegama-Aizkorri skyrace, where he won for the second year running. “Today I gave it everything. I knew I was taking risks, but I told myself, ‘If something happens, it happens.’ I even wrote ‘To be or not to be’ on my hands to remind myself that today was all or nothing,” he said after the finish.

He has said he may step up in distance, but he also wants another go at the series. “I want to come back next year because it will be the [10th] anniversary of the Golden Trail World Series, and that will be very important to me,” he said.

Florea Keeps the Women’s Title

Iceland’s Andrea Kolbeinsdóttir won the women’s race in 3:19:56, her first series win. Romania’s Mădălina Florea was second, nearly six minutes back, and that was enough to keep the overall title she won in 2025. She finished on 1,164 points, ahead of Caroline Kimutai (1,016) and Ruth Gitonga (982), and joins Switzerland’s Maude Mathys, who won in 2020 and 2021, as the only women with two titles. Florea, who also won Sierre-Zinal this summer, called Muju “the hardest race I’ve ever done.”